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About Me

I live and blog in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan BA and MA from Eastern Michigan University. One term in the Michigan Army National Guard. The Institute of Land Warfare, Army magazine, Infantry Magazine, Military Review, Naval Institute Proceedings, and Joint Force Quarterly have published my occasional articles. See "Published Works" on the web version for citations.

The Undead Archives

My undead archives pre-Blogger were actually restored to life after Geocities sites went dark. Start at the old home page here.
If you find a link to the old site on the current site or old site, you should be able to replace the "g" in "geocities" with an "r" and make a good link.
Another archived site is here.
It replaces the ".com" with ".ws".
I hope to move all the older archives here (and started that project) but it is really tedious.

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Afghans Need Every Advantage They Can Get

Afghanistan needs effective air power. Our premature withdrawal of that capability before Afghanistan could even begin to replace Western air power is one reason the Taliban have made gains the last several years.

As the U.S. administration prepares its new strategy for Afghanistan, the Kabul government and its Western allies are working hard to develop an air force that gives government forces the advantage in their war against Taliban militants.

Effective air power to provide recon and surveillance, logistics, transport, medical, strike, and close air support is needed to defeat the Taliban.

One of the effects of effective air power is that it limits the ability of the Taliban to mass troops against small outposts and limits the time Taliban can afford to attack a target before they have to retreat and scatter to avoid air power intervening decisively in the battle.

The Taliban attacked the base overnight and killed 26 Afghan soldiers and wounded 13 more, the Ministry of Defense confirmed, according to TOLONews. Additionally, eight more soldiers are reported as missing and presumably captured by the Taliban. Fifty-seven of the 82 soldiers stationed at the base were killed, wounded or captured during the fighting.

The Afghans have to spread out to control and protect territory and the people to deny their use to the Taliban.

But the Afghan security forces can hardly afford to put a full battalion into every outpost needed for this mission.

Effective air power is an important tool to allow company-sized elements to hold off attacks until reinforcements arrive; and ultimately to make it more difficult for the Taliban to mass enough forces to overrun company outposts; and beyond that to allow Afghan forces to seize the initiative and go after the enemy to further atomize them.

We were winning the war and had the enemy on their heels. We needed to help Afghans keep the pressure on without American combat brigades in the lead.

No longer pinned down by U.S. air cover, Taliban fighters are attacking Afghan military posts in larger numbers with the aim of taking and holding ground, a shift from the hit-and-run strikes with posses of gunmen, explosives and suicide bombers.

According to Gen. Andrew Croft, the highest ranking U.S. Air Force officer in Iraq, the jihadists are struggling to regroup with their fragmented forces, due to coalition air power restricting one of their past battlefield strengths, the ability to move rapidly and amass fighters.

Yes. That's a nice thing to inflict on an enemy. It would be nice to do that in Afghanistan.

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Note on site statistics: When I strip out the junk hits from Blogger statistics that seem to come and go in waves, I appear to have about 10,000 hits per month.

My old statistics package, Site Meter, seems to miss a lot and even disappears visits after they've appeared.

I just added a new StatCounter. So far it shows far fewer hits than Blogger and is more in line with Site Meter. But I suspect neither of the non-Blogger statistics register hits from social media. So I'm not sure what my audience size is. It is puzzling to me.

Of course, it is quite possible that my failure to use Facebook and Twitter has handicapped me in getting an audience. Or it may be an additional issue. I may be a blogosaur!